citynet | video; @The Seventh Crown of the Seventh Demon King;

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video; @The Seventh Crown of the Seventh Demon King;

[ In media res: there's a video feed sharpening into focus, blobs of silver and pink and purple neon resolving into a staircase leading down to a metal door gleaming clean under the artificial lighting around it. Midnight's standing at the door, looking up at the camera and the person filming with his phone, grinning one of his worryingly unhinged grins. ]

How is it, Kaveh? I'd ask you for my best angle, if I had any bad angles.

[ This conversation does... persist... but as the video continues, it becomes perfectly clear that this terribly disorganized promotion is for a bar of some sort. Midnight makes it clear later when he reclaims the camera, hops onto the bar, and aligns himself in the frame in a way that lights both his face and the sign behind him, a rose-lit confection announcing the name of the bar: Seventh Hell Host Club. ]

That's where we are. Do you see that? My name is Midnight, and this is my host club, Seventh Hell. We're near the southernmost station on Line 1. Kaveh and I have been working terribly hard on this establishment, and all of you have his genius and design sense to thank for this momentous occasion. Please do thank him personally. Make a great fuss about it. Remind him that sleep is a temporary state that he should indulge in more often, preferably with me. Thank you.

[ Kaveh is definitely taking the phone at this point, but later on, Midnight will retrieve it and add a postscript. He is sitting in some sort of underground greenhouse this time, surrounded by mist, glass, flowers, and the glow of sun-tinted halogen lights. Regardless of the promo quality, the greenhouse itself is certainly an impressive feat of engineering. ]

Yes, this is one of several themed rooms here at Seventh Hell. You — yes, you — are personally invited to see it. When? Well, whenever you like, so long as the doors are open, but on the 31st of this month... Ahem.

[ He clears his throat, grins. ]

For the turn of the year, you are cordially invited to Seventh Hell's Grand Opening and New Year's Eve joint celebration. Or something like that, I'll come up with a grander name if necessary. There will be drinks, music, a tour of the premises, games, untold bliss, fantasies, beautiful women, beautiful men, myself among them, possibly fireworks if Kaveh can be convinced that I won't set the place ablaze... You won't want to miss out, I promise.

The doors will open at 6 pm, but come by anytime before then, from now until the New Year, if you'd like to enjoy the premises in relative solitude. Send a message to this account if you'd like to be assured of a bartender, or a friendly face to speak to. If I can't come personally, a host or hostess will be there, ready to welcome you to a night of merriment and pleasant conversation.

So, until then... Seventh Hell awaits you.

[ A wink, and the feed shuts off. ]

[ ooc: Along with normal network replies, current host club employees and staff are welcome and encouraged to reply to this post as though Midnight's included them in an impromptu promotion for the club! You can also use this post for post-promo, off camera conversations with him or anyone else in the host club. Go stupid, go wild, go crazy, threadjack, steal his phone and flush it down a toilet. Honestly, the sky is the limit. ]

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[ ... Okay, Midnight's from the side that won the Bloodpeak campaign, he honestly hadn't thought about Ursus in that way before. It makes sense, though. More reason to love Kaveh. His eyes in these sorts of matters are clear. ]

Hm... Willful neglect. I can see that. [ ... ] I think I tried to frame the treatment of the desert people of your Sumeru in the same way. Posed it to Alhaitham. He wouldn't have any of it, but the idea still seems more likely than it isn't. Perhaps my perspective is rather insufficient, though... I do have a habit of seeing malice where there is none.

[ kaveh, whose understanding of terra politics comes from a literal storybook, looks at midnight. oh, dear lord, kaveh thinks, alhaitham and midnight have spoken politics. ]

What? [ and then, because he's kaveh, ] Of course there's malice. The desert people of Sumeru were segregated for five hundred years. Our centralised government is supposed to provide a baseline access of vital services, but I haven't seen a single well-maintained water pump in the desert. I've built quite a few of the recent ones, but it doesn't make any sense to invest in new infrastructure when there isn't the expertise to maintain it overtime, and the reason why the desert doesn't have the expertise is because they won't let the people of the desert have books, or the Akasha, or for any of the Kshahrewar to go there and teach them.

[ it had been what kaveh had said to altria, after all - that the desert and the rainforest were separated, that their capital was never welcoming to the former and only ever swallowed the latter. it was only recently that progress was made. that kaveh is not there to see to it is a betrayal. kaveh frowns. ] But of course Alhaitham would see it that way. If you look at the paperwork filed and the numbers, there is no inequality, even if it's effectively inequity. Did you know that he thinks just because the healthcare in Sumeru is free, anyone who can't afford it is either an idiot or a walking scam? He doesn't take into consideration that free doesn't mean accessible, and that's where the disconnect lies. How on earth did you even get on that topic with him? Was that a part of your 'lectures'?

A bit. We were talking about linguistics and dialects first, which gradually progressed to a conversation about the people of Sumeru, then a few history lessons. He called the neglect simple apathy...

[ ... Midnight shakes his head slowly. ]

There's a certain purity to him, in that sense. Naïvetè. The idea of malice doesn't even measure into his evaluations... Were that the world was as fair and free of ambition as he imagines it to be.

[ Midnight's lived in the world for too long for such innocence to make sense anymore, though. He slips off the bar, thinks about the next promo spot while juggling the conversation in his head. ]

I still learned quite a bit, though. Book learning aside, I've never had a proper course in higher level education before. His indulgence has been quite kind, in that sense.

No. It's not about the parity or the freedom of ambition, when it comes to Alhaitham. It's that fundamentally the reasoning doesn't matter because the end result is the same: the people of the desert still lack that same access and services. Would it feel better for them to know that it was malice and not apathy? Would that get them water pumps? In that sense, then, apathy is the categorical way to describe neglect. [ kaveh bares his teeth. ] But where I differ is that I think it all wouldn't have gone so pear-shaped if enough people had the ability to care at a time where our deity hadn't been trapped in a cage. But the people of the rainforest never thought to make time to foster that ability, and for that, I carry the follies of my people.

[ kaveh's gaze follows midnight. he says: ] You don't get along with him.

[ Midnight snorts. ]

It's still naïvetè. He thinks himself disconnected from the world around him... It follows that he has no respect for the process. A child has more understanding of cause and effect.

[ ... But Midnight sighs. ]

Does that surprise you so? We've led very different lives. We have little in common.

Again, no. Alhaitham understands cause and effect just fine, and he knows he is connected with the world. He simply chose to step back and view it from an objective perspective. What I would argue is that stepping away also changes the view. You miss the impact of details. But that's why he's open to debate, and so am I.

[ midnight sighs. kaveh arms cross. he leans back against the countertop, and looks. ]

And you've lived very different lives from most people here, and you seem to get along with most people just fine. Did I ever tell you that you and he are similar in all the ire-raising ways?

Oh, debate... That word rankles terribly with me, you know. I tend to be right, inasfar as what I care to be right about. Lectures are much more helpful for me.

[ Midnight leans on an arm and looks back. ]

A man who can afford to step back and look at the world objectively is in a position to separate himself from the consequences of doing so. So no, love. His understanding of cause and effect will always be flawed.

I don't deny that we're similar, my darling. He simply has no curiosity about what I'm curious about, and the inverse applies as well. I treat him as a repository for information, and he is satisfied with the distance of being treated like a book. Did you wish for more?

[ kaveh looks. he considers this. but this isn't, kaveh thinks, what kaveh wants. this is what midnight wants. in a tone of a ponderous lecture long since passed, echoed in vaunted rusted halls: ]

A man who can afford to step back and look at his own pain objectively is in a position to separate himself from the consequences of doing so. His understanding of his own pain will always be flawed.

[ ... ] Isn't that so?

[ ... A laugh. This old nugget. ]

There is no moral or pragmatic prerogative for me to have any sort of relationship with my pain, love. I think of others, try to ease theirs. Pray tell, what are the consequences of that? And how much of what you are about to tell me can be reflected upon your own head?

Didn't I say so, Midnight? We are cut from the same cloth, and I am willing to engage in a death spiral with you, so long as you go down with me. I'm not above such things.

And still, you are wrong. [ the red of kaveh's gaze rests. pink, and red, and all the spilled blood in between. ] You owe it to yourself to have a relationship with your pain. Who else do we owe but ourselves? Do you find yourself worth having that relationship with?

[ ... Midnight leans in, matching Kaveh's gaze. Alarm red, toxic pink. ]

There was a point in my life, short as it was, where I could have answered that question with a yes. Can you say the same?

[ it's the sorrow that comes first. it always is. that old ache of it, because to never had it is incomparable to having had it and then losing it. it could have once been a yes.

there's an angle that kaveh takes on when he needs to be taken seriously. it brings out the cooler shades of his eyes. pink against pink, a single band of it across the back of a poison arrow frog. everyone in this room knows that kaveh tends towards not flight, but fight. ]

No. [ kaveh's hand lifts. scars and calluses skim the contour of midnight's cheek. ] That is why you are known, Midnight.

[ It's when Midnight grabs Kaveh's hand and presses his lips to that rough palm, this relatively ordinary moment on a relatively normal day, when he realizes that he's gone quite mad for this man. It's not a particularly singular happenstance, but he has two nickels, which isn't much, but it's weird that it's happened twice.

(Oddly enough, the other nickel did not come from Netzach.) ]

Kaveh, I know where you are, and you know where I am. You simply have no experience with where I've been. Your perspective on your worth has no peaks or troughs. It's a plane, and you suffer for its monotony.

[ He kisses each finger. He wishes they hadn't put away the cot. He wants to know that Kaveh's been sleeping. Another alarm, another ziptie. ]

My disdain for myself has a beginning and an end. A shape. A depth with a bottom. Yours does not. There are no places to surface. You're going to drown, and I can't breathe for you, darling.

Do I seem like the one who is drowning right now, Midnight?

[ kaveh, whose hand is being held by midnight. midnight, who kisses each of kaveh's fingers as if counting them by name. once, those fingers had trembled. that was drowning. but there is no sea here. the land is dry. the desert is beautiful because it hides a well, but kaveh has never been the well. he has only ever been the desert, and not all deserts have the possibility of a well.

'my disdain for myself as a beginning and an end' midnight says, and kaveh thinks - ]

And when have I ever asked you to breathe for me? You cannot breathe for me, just as I cannot breathe for you. But I know the shape of your hand, and I will pull you out as you drown. Where is the end of your disdain for yourself? Death, Midnight, ends everything. There's nothing remarkable about that end. The only thing worth stating is if past that end you still intend to walk on.

[ then, in that self-same tone: ] Midnight, what happened to you in the Haunted House? Tell me.

[ Midnight lifts his eyebrow. ]

You've breathed water all your life, my love. I tell you yes, but not because I expect you to understand what it looks like from where I am.

[ But Midnight relents. That is, he pauses, grabs a crystal bottle of brandy close at hand, then saunters over to a nearby booth. Somewhere to recline.

He pats the seat next to him, then kicks up his legs. (He'll wipe down the seats himself later.) ]

Sit here, love. Once you pull me out, what dry land do you have for me to land on? If I tell you what happened to me, it's because I know there's nowhere else to go but down.

[ He pops the bottle open, drinks directly from its mouth, and sighs. Speaking of that other damned nickel. ]

Why is it that you're so replete with empathy for everyone but yourself? Don't answer that. You'll just turn it on me. But you know I'm right.

[ says kaveh, because this is what he is thinking: that if he has breathed water all his life, then perhaps kaveh is a fish. perhaps the only people who drown are the ones who realise that there is air to drown in.

midnight kicks up his legs. kaveh slides into the booth next to him. he nudges midnight's shoulder with his own, and beckons for him to pass the bottle. ]

And I've yet to agree with your assessment that I am drowning. I am on dry land, and if not, then I am on a boat. But if it's a boat, I will lash you to the side rather than pull you aboard - I'll need you to learn to swim before I let you go anywhere, lest you once again run off to drown yourself like the fool you are. [ kaveh looks. ] That bad?

[ There's an old, old story about a young, beautiful Ægir princess who fell in love with a prince of Iberian descent. She made a deal with a Seaborn witch to disguise her fins, her scales, the tips of her pointed ears, in exchange for her voice, nerves afire where her missing appendages should have been.

She found him, danced for him on his birthday. She made him smile.

On the evening of the third day, she slipped out quietly onto the deck of his ship, watched the sun set, and sighed. She slipped and fell to a knee, then collapsed. She landed as a bubble of seafoam on the wood beneath her. She pretended she was something she was not long enough to make her beloved smile.

Midnight passes the bottle to Kaveh, then tucks his head onto his shoulder, noses into blond hair, and breathes in. Alcohol, sawdust, sun. He could drown with him. But first: the burnt nerves, the loss of a voice. ]

I know what drowning looks like. I have been dry land. You aren't there yet, my love.

[ ... Said quietly against Kaveh's hair: ]

I would never kiss you if you didn't want one. You know that about me, right?

[ midnight tucks his head into kaveh's shoulder. midnight is many things, kaveh knows. he is a grating laugh on a video call. he is a hand held in the darkness. he is a silhouette against the backdrop of a crumbling kazdelian manse, he is a hand holding a shove before the light blots out. he is whispered words of love, and the fangs of it. midnight right now is a warm weight against kaveh's shoulder. his face is in kaveh's hair. kaveh's hand lifts. it slides in turn into midnight's hair. it cards through it, the dark murk of the strands there, it finds the tip of his long pointed ears and the skim of his crown.

kaveh thinks, he doesn't feel much like the one drowning right now. he takes a draught from the bottle. it's disgusting, in the sense that these things should be done properly. the bottle ought to be chilled. there ought to be ice to release the flavour, and a decanter to bring out the dept of it. kaveh ought to swirl it in the glass to appreciate the aroma before the taste. there is an order to things, how things ought to be experienced. kaveh drinks from the lip of the bottle. the sticky-sweet scent of the alcohol burns. ]

I know. [ kaveh says, ] As you would know that I won't hesitate to stop you if you do something that I can't accept; for you to take something that I have not already chosen to give.

[ kaveh sets the bottle down between them. ] Do you want a kiss, Midnight?

[ Midnight doesn't reply, simply motions for the bottle, then takes a second drink, then a third. He puts it down. He puts it down not because he doesn't want the whole bottle, but because Kaveh is here. Midnight is terrible at drinking alone.

He does want a kiss. He also wishes, sometimes, that his clumsy attempts to preserve his life had been less successful. ]

I want you to live a life with less pain. Or I would like to know less of others.

[ Neither of these things are answers in the affirmative. He knows that. His lips and throat aren't numb enough for this conversation.

After a long moment of resting his head against Kaveh's hair, he speaks again. ]

Do you remember that story? The bridge, Alhaitham. The river. We buried you.

[ He's driving at his point. This is the only way he can think of to get there without indulging in more drink. ]

[ midnight puts down the bottle. it's kaveh's turn to take it up. he takes a draught of it, and feels in his hands in the chill of it the cold of the river water, the light fall of dirt, the way it filled up like water in an ever-churning well. you could drown in something solid. kaveh has always known that. he had watched it come.

it had been slow. that was what kaveh remembers. ]

I do. [ kaveh says, when he puts the bottle down between them again. he leans into midnight's lean. the two of them and their bodies form a triangle. there is nothing more solid; there is nothing more precarious. ] I was buried.

[ neither of you had a choice in the matter, kaveh nearly says. but what he says instead, is this: ] Go on.

[ No. We buried you. Midnight turns his head to Kaveh, hums into his hair when he presses his mouth to him, curls his hand around his. A wordless apology. If there was another way... ]

I'm sorry, my love. I tried to make it quick.

[ He breathes for a moment. ]

I was... hoping to give Alhaitham someone to hate. Someone he could blame for your passing. I'm inclined toward death in a way few are. It's something I can do quite well.

It's not a part of me I want others to know about. I want to be safe. The sort of person that others have little need to fear. I want others to think well of me. To associate me with only happiness, celebration...

[ midnight kisses a wordless apology into the blond crown of kaveh's head. kaveh thinks - midnight has never needed to apologise. not really. it was the book that put them into this position. it was the city that made it so. but it was kaveh who ultimately chose it, to have it happen, to have it be the only solution, because kaveh couldn't bear seeing the two of them sharpen swords at each other.

this must've been what heartbreak was.

midnight breathes. kaveh listens to him breathe. he remembers the lack of breath in as the dirt swallowed him, as he swallowed the dirt, as his lungs filled and he struggled to not struggle in that darkness, because alhaitham and midnight have enough regrets on their hands.

instead, kaveh turns his memory towards this: a kazdelian manse, the rise two moons above the fata morgana of an uncertain horizon. an architect and a sanguinarch, and a single, stolen mouthful of blood. ]

Help me understand, Midnight. I have the scattered memories of a storybook. I have the pieces of you that I've seen strewn throughout the debris of what this city has left behind. But I want to hear it from you.

[ kaveh's hand curls in midnight's hair. ]

Tell me in your own words what it means to you to be inclined towards death, and why I would think any less of you for it.

[ Midnight laughs soundlessly, amusement on a puff of breath that dissipates exactly one inch in front of his mouth. ]

You debase yourself, and always look upward to others. Even those you pretend to disdain. I cannot imagine a world where you would think less of me, and this is to your demerit.

[ He runs a hand down Kaveh's back. ]

Vampires do not shed their taste for blood. Not once in their long, long years. To do so is a sort of madness... Or mercy. It cultivates a certain mentality, you know. It's a necessity for vampires to think of others, at some level, as property. As "less than". As feeding stock, things to be kept tamed.

And yet we are human. We laugh, we weep. We fight, disappoint ourselves, others. We grow hungry, we experience joy and love... And we experience these things with others, regardless of whether they should be simple livestock or not.

[ Midnight continues to breathe. It's lovely, really, being in a place he built with Kaveh. They've touched every board, floor, fixture here. It's a gift. ]

I'm young, Kaveh. I'm still arrogant enough to believe that my purpose in life is to bring joy to others. But one day, I will look back upon my long, long life, and find no one in it. No one behind me, no one ahead. Just a long string of regret in the form of those I should have never loved. That was a future I expected before. It's a future I won't miss.

For a vampire... No, for a Sarkaz. To die young is a mercy. A gift. The only comfort I have. That I would leave this world before love left me...

But the most domesticated of hounds still howl for their packs. A freshly born fowlbeast still cries to its mother for food, knowing nothing of either.

[ ... ]

When I killed you, I lived the part of me that likes the way you taste, the way you bleed, the way you die. It's nothing so merciful as a separate personality... It's who I am. I simply like to dream, most days, that it isn't there.

[ kaveh remembers. it's odd to do so. this isn't his life. it was never his life. but he remembers - the sarkaz and their pride. the hollowed out heart of kazdel and the celebration of death. the way sarkaz kept their blood and their weapons and their death close, so close, to their still-beating hearts. kaveh knows the context. he doesn't understand it, but he knows it. the diaspora, the destruction of kazdel, the horror and the sorrow. what it's like to be without a home. you build your own homes then, you build your identity so that you couldn't be divested from it, because without it, what did you have?

that is the sarkaz. that is midnight's blood. the pain, divested from the heart.

midnight's hand runs down kaveh's back. kaveh leans into it, the warm weight of it. he thinks of the stolen mouthful of blood, of those last, terrifying moments. ]

I was scared. [ kaveh says, then, ] I was scared, Midnight.

[ vulnerability has never come easily to kaveh, who wears the skin of something braver and lighter over it to compensate. it is a flaw in him. he is a marble statue with a fundamental flaw, carved out of material that shouldn't have been wasted on a bust meant to crumble. kaveh peels that skin from him and lets it rest at their feet. he draws midnight in close, and forces the next words from his lips: ] It was my hands. The nerves in them died. When my father died, my mother's hands never stopped trembling. They trembled for years. She could never pick up a pencil again. Midnight, I was scared, because my hands weren't mine. When you bit into me, I was scared again.

You didn't have Oripathy. I would die if I gave it back to you. Who cares about that life, it was a metaphorical death of my soul.

[ kaveh remembers that his breath had been cold, in the end. he leans into the crook of midnight's neck. he breathes. kaveh is warm. ] I was furious, Midnight, but only for the choice that you made to take it back, to drink it knowing that you will have to drink from another later and think of the moment you chose to drink death. I was scared, but only for the suffering you would have. Midnight, if you didn't fear while drinking, if you enjoyed it the way your biology is meant to, then I'm perhaps a little less afraid, though no less furious.

You are a terrible vampire, Midnight, as you have just told me. If that part of you shielded you, how am I supposed to blame it?

[ kaveh looks. ] For a Sarkaz, to die young is a mercy in part because the other choices are too cruel to bear. Do you still think this now? That one day, you will look back in your life, and see nobody there? Just people that you were not meant to love?

[ There should never have been a need for Kaveh to fear anything while Midnight was there. He picks up Kaveh's hand, kisses it, cradles it to his face, letting his cheek warm his fingers. Happiness is within arm's reach when one is with the Demon King. It's simply how the world should work.

The future is bright and glorious. There is nothing behind. ]

Kaveh. There is nothing there. No past. No pain, no memory of pain. No regret. Nothing to regret. And without any of that... I wake the next day, and the next, and the next.

[ ... The logic to why he's rejected his pain, if not how, should start to make more sense. He had, at one point, made plans to live for a long, long time, preferably with his sanity and moral compass intact. Sacrifices had to be made. The people around him had to be protected. They couldn't one day fall victim to the crumbling of a heart too old, too tired, to bear the weight of its past sins. ]

... I can't say I rid myself of all of the fear, the regret, the disappointment. But I did my best.

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cw: suicidal ideation (if you squint)

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